There's been a storm brewing in Japan—emoji, the ubiquitous text-based faces that dominate Japanese mobile communications, have been getting mistranslated between carriers. You send a picture of a bull, they get a picture of a cow, AND PEOPLE START DYING.

So three of the largest Japanese cell carriers, Docomo, KDDI, and eAccess, have announced that they will adopt a universal emoji database of hundreds of smileys based on Docomo's current system. KDDI and eAccess have to create more than 200 emoji each to catch up with Docomo's library so they should be rolling out on new handsets this summer. [Nikkei via The Verge - Image: Tatiana Popova / Shutterstock]